The calculator who switched to Bidcon and likes to predict problems
– In my job a lot is a matter of risk minimization and about identifying which parts of a project that will be the most difficult and costly and take this into account in the estimation.
– When entering a new project, you know nothing about it and everything is really a huge risk. However, as your insight into the project deepens you can make more reliable assessments. At the same time, you have to make sure not to get stuck in technical details that can consume much of your time, and that in the end is without any real economic importance or purpose.
Patrik Gustafsson works as a plumbing calculator at Veitech, an offensive part of the Veidekke Group, that is working to change the installation industry with new technology and to see installations in a construction project as a whole. Patrik has been at Veitech from the start.
This initative at Veitech also meant that Patrik switched the software for his estimations, from Tenwin to Bidcon.
Time to change
– I think many people remain working with the tools they have always used. There are not so many plumbing calculators in larger companies that run Bidcon yet. If it wasn´t because of the initative at Veitech I would probably still be working in Tenwin or maybe even Excel. But I felt that now it was time to switch to the software that Elecosoft sees as the new tool for our profession.
– Bidcon is a bit more intuitive and, above all, it allows you to sort, group and build up your estimations in a better way than in other software. For example, if you want to do a ten-storey office building you can divide the amounts much easier.
– The intuitive functionallity is incredibly important since the projects change over time. You make a first calculation on one basis, then you get new documents and make new calculations and want to monitor where the changes in cost are. Then you can structure and group your calculations in a clear way, this saves you a lot of time and helps you make better assessments.
– There are also much more complete recipes that makes the job easier. Building types could also be built in Tenwin, but then you had to do all the work yourself. Plus prints. Ok, they are not optimal in Bidcon either, but at my previous workplace I was trying to get in prints from Tenwin for many years without really succeeding, Patrik says with a laugh.
An industry in change
Veitech has a dedicated calculation department that manages all installation areas (electricity, heating and sanitation, ventilation, cooling, sprinkler, fire and safety, automation and energy) and the company works as integrated with other departments as possible just because they see the projects as a whole, instead of a chain of separate processes.
– The industry is changing. Traditionally, calculators have been a bit of “glorified predictors” who deliver things that no one else understands. This means putting a lot of risk into one person’s hands when making bids and calculations.
– And although this is a typical job based on experience, where a really good calculator can estimate the result just by looking at an object, there is a great need for both the installation industry and the calculator role to change. We need to become more digital and more technology-intensive. The building industry has a completely different drive in this direction, and they put a lot of effort on digitize processes. Within the installation industry we must keep up with this.
At Veitech we do our best to adapt to our present. This is done by our work methods, routines and modern IT tools that support everything from calculations to purchasing and production preparation, enabling us to keep the prices throughout a whole project. In collaboration with other parts of the building process Patrik feels the most satisfaction within his job.
– When the project manager gives me a call and wants to talk about a problem that he has identified, and I can show that I already have captured this moment in the calculation, and made sure that there is time and money to solve it. Then I feel great satisfaction, “concludes Patrik Gustafsson.
About Veitech
Veitech is part of the Veidekke Group, which is Scandinavia’s fourth largest construction company. Veitech was founded in 2016 with the ambition to change the installation industry by always seeing the installations in a property as a whole. Today, there are a total of 17 employees and sales of approximately SEK 120 million.